Having premiered composer Ethan Boxley’s Fanfare for the National Anthem and arrangement for the National Anthem in G major this summer during its July concert to rousing applause, the Fort Collins Symphony opened its 2018/2019 Masterworks concert series with an encore performance of the Fanfare for the National Anthem. The reception was simply remarkable. A video of the performance is available.

KUNC editor Stacy Nick interviews Ethan Boxley, Northwestern University music composition student, about his commissioned “Fanfare for the National Anthem.” The piece, featuring the anthem in G major, will premiere at the City of Fort Collins’ Fourth of July celebration at City Park.

The goal was to do that in a way that keeps the song’s swelling emotion, he said, but that also makes it possible for people to get swept up in the music and sing, rather than worry about hitting all the right notes.

“Sometimes in composing it feels like you’re trying to communicate the flood of emotion that you feel so that other people will hear your music and feel that, too,” he said.

Composer Ethan Boxley’s Fanfare for the National Anthem and his arrangement of National Anthem in G will be performed by the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra during its upcoming July 4 (FC City Park) and July 7 (Red Feather Lakes) concerts. The impetus for singing the National Anthem in G comes from Dr. Ed Siegel, a native son and avid FCS supporter, who has championed lowering the key of the national anthem for over two decades.

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Music Theory Corner

The three intermezzi of Brahm's op 117 should be played as a set because when one listens to all three of them consecutively, one becomes aware of contrasts in form, motivic treatment, harmonic language and rhythm between the first and third movements which are mediated (as should happen in a good work of the Brahmsian era) by the
third movement.
One must take note of the fact that all three of the intermezzi make use of the same basic melodic interval—the step of a second, treated differently in the themes of each of the movements.